


These Monstrous Things

by cuddlesome



Category: Spider-Man (Movies - Raimi), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Canon-Typical Violence, Concussions, During Canon, Mild Blood, Other, Robot/Human Relationships, Sickfic, Weird Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 03:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16360043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesome/pseuds/cuddlesome
Summary: Otto's actuators are all he's got to rely on after severe blows to the head courtesy of Spider-Man.





	These Monstrous Things

**Author's Note:**

> / shows up to the fandom fourteen years late/ waaaasssuuuuuuuuupppppppp

It’s a wonder the old broad manages to break Otto’s sunglasses before Spider-Man gets the chance. Once the vigilante surpasses his actuator arms, he sets to bashing Otto’s skull in with his fists. There isn’t much Otto can do to resist until he regains his bearings enough to peel Spider-Man off.

 

Attempting to throw a punch in retaliation would be useless. Otto’s flesh-and-blood arms are on the flabby side. More likely than not he’d only succeed in hurting himself trying to hit the webslinger. Fighting with his new limbs came naturally, almost frighteningly so, but fighting with his own body does not.

 

As such, Otto’s body, particularly his head, sustains the most damage in his latest confrontation with Spider-Man. Meanwhile his metal tentacles, the blunt instruments with which he moves and fights, are no worse for wear.

 

Otto hangs limp in the harness seared to his flesh as the actuators carry him “home.” He keeps his eyes squinted shut against the painful sting of the sun after discarding his broken sunglasses, trusting his mechanical limbs’ cameras to guide them. A fat drop of blood slides down his cheek from a cut below his blackened eye.

 

The actuators chatter amongst themselves, then ask him something.

 

His response is delayed, as it takes him a moment to understand through the pain lancing through his brain.

 

Otto chuckles, causing his temples to throb even more. “I may have a mild concussion.”

 

More talking.

 

“Oh, a hospital.” His head lolls back. “Good idea. We have such a wonderful track record with hospitals, don’t we?”

 

They hiss in indignation, then let the subject drop. The thought of murdering a room full of hospital staff again doesn’t perturb the actuators as much as the idea that they’ll attempt to amputate them.

 

Otto’s dizziness increases as the tentacles bound from building to building. Their speed is efficient for a machine but damaging to a near-comatose man. They have to stop on a rooftop on the outskirts of the city because he gets well and truly sick. The arms curl around Otto’s shuddering body as he collapses onto his hands and knees and vomits. It’s at times like these, panting through his soured mouth, that he misses real, human touch. Not the cheap imitation offered by the protrusions from his spine. In this position, their weight bearing down on him is accentuated.

 

He thinks he remembers someone rubbing his lower back where the base of the actuators now rest after a long day. The memory slips away into the fog, right in time for him to lose consciousness.

 

When Otto awakens, he’s back at the harbor, leaned against a support beam and stripped to the waist. The actuators have busied themselves with attempting to clean his battered, bloodied body. One of them props him up while the others stroke wet cloths across him. The stink of sweat and blood is exchanged for the stagnant foulness of harbor water.

 

It occurs to him that taking a proper shower with the metal monstrosities will be difficult and fully submerging into a bath may never be possible again. In the grand scheme of things, he knows he has bigger problems. Still, the simple pleasure of relieving aching in his muscles after being hunched over his work for hours if not days on end by taking a bath will be lost.

 

Otto grimaces as an actuator drags a sopping bit of fabric over his face while another mops at his bare chest. He can’t recall anyone ever touching him there outside of... someone. He can't remember who. His head hurts too much. Still, it feels like a violation, somehow.

 

“That’s enough,” he says, shoving them away.

 

The more delicate, tiny claws at the center of one of the actuators holds a new pair of sunglasses. It places them on his face before closing its claws into a muzzle to ruffle his hair, almost motherly. Something in Otto’s chest tears, but that sensation is overpowered from another dull throb in his head.

 

Even so, the sunglasses are helping to alleviate some of the pain from his strained vision if not the damage Spider-Man did to him. Otto can’t recall having the foresight to steal another pair in advance, so the actuators must have gotten them while he was unconscious. He imagines what a sight that must have been—Doctor Octopus made doubly horrifying with the appearance that the human at the center of the mass of tentacles was a corpse, stealing from a hapless sunglass vendor. His lips split in a blocky, crooked-toothed smile at the mental image.

 

He pets the top of the muzzle of the actuator that had given him the sunglasses and it makes a soft, small noise edged with metallic scraping.

 

Otto shakes his head. “What would I do without you?”

 

The others are scrabbling for Otto’s attention, next, wrapping the bulk of themselves around him in a way that’s too tight and too uncomfortable to be called a hug.


End file.
